FILE - In this June 18, 2015 file photo, Charleston, S.C., shooting suspect Dylann Storm Roof is escorted from the Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, N.C. Prosecutors who wanted to show that Roof was a cruel, angry racist simply used his own words at his death penalty trial on charges he killed nine black people in June 2015 at a Charleston church. Roof's two-hour videotaped confession less than a day after the shooting and a handwritten journal found in his car when he was arrested were introduced into evidence Friday, Dec. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton, File)

Dylann Roof has been moved to a medium-security prison where he'll await the death penalty

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April 22, 2017 01:46 PM EDT

Convicted Charleston church shooter Dyann Roof has been relocated to the medium-security prison, Terre Haute Federal Prison, in Indiana, where he will await the death penalty, NBC News reported. Roof is the first person to be convicted of a federal hate crime and sentenced to the death penalty.

Prior to the death penalty, Roof was in custody in Al Cannon Detention Center in North Charleston, South Carolina.

The Terre Haute prison houses inmates who are put to death by lethal injection. It currently houses 1, 338 inmates.

Other inmates who have served time at the Indiana prison include Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and murderer and drug trafficker Raul Garza.

Roof's transfer comes about two weeks after he pleaded guilty to state charges, where he was given nine life sentences. He was given the death penalty in federal court in January.

The self-proclaimed white supremacist represented himself in court, and admitted that he had stormed a historic African-American church in South Carolina, to kill black worshippers in order to start a "race war."

Roof's transfer to the medium-security prison comes just as the executions of several Arkansas death row inmates have been stymied by the courts. Arkansas devised a plan to execute eight men by the end of April before one of the drug expires. On Friday, the state carried out its first execution in nearly a dozen years.